The colour of the American criminal justice system
Dr Cherrie Short looks at the racial inequalities in the criminal justice system in America – and draws comparisons with the UK
SHORTLY before Christmas, Bobby Joe Maxwell suffered a massive heart attack, leaving him in a vegetative state. At the time, his name was on a court docket in Los Angeles, awaiting retrial for murders attributed to a serial killer in the city’s homeless community in the late 1970s, known as the “Skid Row Stabber.”
Los Angeles police detectives had arrested and released two other suspects in the killings, but turned their attention to Maxwell after his palm print was found on a park bench near one of the crime scenes.
Legal experts and an appellate court have long raised questions about the validity of the evidence against Maxwell. No witnesses could identify him at trial, and the only forensic link between Maxwell and the killings was the palm print. Maxwell’s prosecution hinged largely on the testimony of a jailhouse informant who insisted Maxwell had confessed to the killings.
Forty years later, Los Angeles prosecutors dropped all criminal charges and released him from custody. According to his attorney, Maxwell had always maintained his innocence, even when he was facing the death penalty and was offered a plea bargain.
Maxwell, who is now comatose, was released to a nearby hospital this month after it was decided there was not enough evidence to keep him incarcerated for the killings on skid row during the 1970s.
Needless to say, Bobby Joe Maxwell is African American. His sister told reporters that she hopes he wakes up again soon, so that she can share the good news with him.
What happens when it’s too late for justice or reparation? For numerous men and women of colour in America, this question is all too relevant when it comes to the criminal justice system.
The evidence for racial disparities in the criminal justice system is well documented. The disproportionate racial impact of certain laws and policies has led to higher rates of arrests and incarceration in lowincome communities of colour. From the War on Drugs, to racial profiling during police investigations, men of colour in America are disproportionately targeted for incarceration.
According to a data-based report published by The Sentencing Project, African American men in the states are incarcerated across the country at more than five times the rate of whites.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that in 12 states across America, more than half of the prison population is African American.
Racial inequalities in the criminal justice system are no accident, but rather are rooted in a history of oppression and prejudiced social practices that have targeted people of colour and helped create an inaccurate picture of crime that deceptively links them with criminality.
These profoundly unequal outcomes across racial groups have several causes. One is The War on Drugs which mandated long sentences for rather minor drug offences. Another was the political campaign by both Democrats and Republicans to be “Tough on Crime,” producing harsh laws, such as the “three strikes and you’re out” law that gave life sentences after three successive felonies.
The racial discrimination manifested in the implementation of these laws by law enforcement led to unbalanced drug war misery suffered by communities of colour. Many different communities of colour bear the impact of the discriminatory enforcement of drug laws, often targeting cheaper street drugs such as crack cocaine and crystal meth with severe prosecution, while sentencing slap-on-the-hand punishment for more expensive drugs like powder cocaine. Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory maximum sentence for African Americans as compared to white people charged with the same offence.
The death sentence is another aspect of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. People of colour have accounted for a disproportionate 43% of total executions since 1976 and 55% of those awaiting execution. While white victims account for approximately one-half of all murder victims, 80% of all capital cases involve white victims. As of October, 2002, 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim African American, compared with 178 African American defendants executed for murders with white victims.
As a whole, it can be noted that people of colour experience discrimination at every stage of the criminal justice system and are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced and burdened with a lifelong criminal record. Nationwide, some of the most egregious racial disparities can be seen in the case of African Americans and Latinos in low-income communities. An overhaul of the United States criminal justice system is needed, with an emphasis on the root causes of incarceration, including, but not limited to, high poverty levels, extreme inequality, and racial tension.
While perhaps not to the same degree as in the US, politics in the UK led to the adoption of some of the same harsh sentencing practices and racially discriminatory enforcement.
According to findings published in 2017 by Labour MP David Lammy, the number of black and minority ethnic (BAME) inmates in prisons in England and Wales is hugely disproportionate compared to their white peers. Data show that the BAME population of youth prisoners rose from 25% in 2006 to 41% last year.
If we are to have a just society, we must re-focus our attention on the root causes of crime, such as poverty and inequality, rather than the discriminatory application of harsh sentencing, with the goal in America and the United Kingdom of eliminating colour bias from each country’s criminal justice system.
■ Dr Short, a former Race Equality Commissioner for Wales, is now associate dean of Global and Community Initiatives and professor of practice at USC Suzanne Dworak School of Social Work in Los Angeles, California.